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The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding
The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding
The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding
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The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding

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"Welcome to the Faith Club. We're three mothers from three faiths—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—who got together to write a picture book for our children that would highlight the connections between our religions. But no sooner had we started talking about our beliefs and how to explain them to our children than our differences led to misunderstandings. Our project nearly fell apart."

After September 11th, Ranya Idliby, an American Muslim of Palestinian descent, faced constant questions about Islam, God, and death from her children, the only Muslims in their classrooms. Inspired by a story about Muhammad, Ranya reached out to two other mothers—a Christian and a Jew—to try to understand and answer these questions for her children. After just a few meetings, however, it became clear that the women themselves needed an honest and open environment where they could admit—and discuss—their concerns, stereotypes, and misunderstandings about one another. After hours of soul-searching about the issues that divided them, Ranya, Suzanne, and Priscilla grew close enough to discover and explore what united them.

The Faith Club is a memoir of spiritual reflections in three voices that will make readers feel as if they are eavesdropping on the authors' private conversations, provocative discussions, and often controversial opinions and conclusions. The authors wrestle with the issues of anti-Semitism, prejudice against Muslims, and preconceptions of Christians at a time when fundamentalists dominate the public face of Christianity. They write beautifully and affectingly of their families, their losses and grief, their fears and hopes for themselves and their loved ones. And as the authors reveal their deepest beliefs, readers watch the blossoming of a profound interfaith friendship and the birth of a new way of relating to others.

In a final chapter, they provide detailed advice on how to start a faith club: the questions to ask, the books to read, and most important, the open-minded attitude to maintain in order to come through the experience with an enriched personal faith and understanding of others.

Pioneering, timely, and deeply thoughtful, The Faith Club's caring message will resonate with people of all faiths.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherAtria Books
Release dateOct 3, 2006
ISBN9780743298629
Author

Ranya Idliby

Ranya Idliby was raised in Dubai and McLean, Virginia. She holds a bachelor of science from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, and earned her MS in international relations from the London School of Economics. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children.

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Rating: 3.900662357615894 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A dear friend loaned me her copy of The Faith Club, as I was reading The Red Tent for my book club, and pondering over how Islam, Christianity, and Judaism all came from similar historical roots and might fit together in harmony. In this nonfiction book, three women, a Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew, meet over a series of years to chronicle some of their thoughts and discussions regarding their beliefs in their religions and their ideas about faith. What seems to have resulted as an outcome of their frank conversations, is an understanding and harmonious respect for the diversity and similarities of each religion. Having such interfaith conversations helped the three women to realize, that although they might worship God in different ways, through their own cultural and religious practices, they could participate in some of the ritualistic events and appreciate the other women’s faith in God. I especially loved the poem which Priscilla, the Jewish woman, heard at a funeral she attended, and it totally addressed the way that I feel wanting to pass on a spirit of love, long after I am gone. The poem reads:EpitaphBy Merritt MalloyWhen I dieGive what’s left of me awayTo childrenAnd old men that want to die.And if you need to cry,Cry for your brotherWalking the street beside you.And when you need me,Put your arms Around anyoneAnd give themWhat you need to give to me.I want to leave you something,Something better Than wordsOr sounds.Look for meIn the people I’ve knownOr loved,And if you cannot give me away,At least let me live on in your eyesAnd not on your mind.You can love me mostBy lettingHands touch hands,By letting Bodies touch bodiesAnd by letting goOf childrenThat need to be free.Love doesn’t die,People do.So, when all that’s left of meIs love,Give me away.I was so fortunate to have been invited to participate in Ramadan dinners recently, and I have come to respect Muslim teachings about love, kindness, and respect toward others, as well as Islamic discipline and fortitude in fasting (meaning no eating and drinking of fluids until after dusk for the whole month of Ramadan). God’s outpouring of love for others is truly manifested in a pluralistic attitude, embracing diversity in religions and realizing that we are all God’s children. The three women of The Faith Club sought to promote such an open-minded approach through their insightful discussions about their faith, and the last chapter of the book even provides detailed advice of how to start a faith club.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Faith Club I requested for Christmas. It's billed as a frank discussion between a Muslim, Christian, and Jew about all things spiritual, stereotypical, and religious. Largely, it succeeds. They actually make a distinction between spirituality and religion. They address the issues of religion being co-opted for political reasons. They talk about the stereotypes they had of one another based on preconceived ideas- including things people wouldn't admit in polite company. It's an honest book, which you can't say about everything out there today, and I enjoyed the read. I think there are a couple of places it fell down- not addressing the Christian Right in the same way (or as much as) they handled the vocal Muslim political sect, and they didn't involve a conservative Muslim woman or a conservative Christian. I understand that this particular book wasn't the goal of the project, but I think broadening the discussion would have had interesting implications. It's definitely worth picking up, even if it's just from the library.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    As much as I wanted to like this book it just didn't work for me. The change of voices was badly edited, I didn't feel the connection that many readers claim to feel with the book.A brilliant idea with so so execution.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ranya Idliby-Muslim, Suzanne Oliver-Episcopal and Priscilla Warner-Jewish. After 911. The three discuss concerns, conflicts, etc. raising their children in the world today in their particular religions. They develop an understanding of each others religions, but also involves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since Ranya is a displaced Palistinian.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Woodrell has definitely captured what it is like to live in a subculture that is so isolated from the bigger world around it. The Ozark area is such a paradox of beautiful lodges and resorts and, on the other hand, pockets of isolated, poverty-stricken rural poor. Woodrell's portrayal of the Dolly clan is, unfortunately, not unbelievable.Ree's search for her father who has skipped his bail reflects a parallel search for a better life; she doesn't know where to look for him and her only idea of a better life for herself is to join the Army. The effects that meth have had on the rural poor is devastating. That together with generations of family hardships, feuds, intermarriage, and poverty paints a pretty depressing picture.I live in Missouri and have just now discovered Woodrell. He calls his writing "Country Noir" which is truly an apt description. This isn't a pretty book, but it is an honest one and one that I would highly recommend for those looking to meet characters not found in most other writing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another book I highly recommend. Definitely made me think, definitely made me wonder and challenged me in some ways. Very interesting to see how they came together, what issues were the hardest for them to work out, and how they overcame those differences and became really great friends. Nice. Made me really wish I had people to talk to like that frankly! LOL!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Following 9/11, three New York mothers – a Christian, a Muslim and a Jew -- agree to meet and discuss their faith in hopes of writing a children’s book. The women are well-educated, but to a great extent uninformed about the common roots of their faiths, as well as the intricacies of each others’ beliefs. Starting out as virtual strangers, they stumble over complicated stereotypes, hit cultural landmines and finally arrive at enlightenment over the course of more than three years. Eventually, they forge powerful friendships with each other, while changing and growing spiritually in unexpected ways. The book includes excerpts from their conversations, as well as each woman’s narration of the effects of the dialog upon her spiritual, religious and family life. The text is well-written, well-organized, engaging and an easy but very worthwhile read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This memoir of three women examining their religious faiths was well written and brought up many interesting questions about what unites us despite our religious differences. In the end I felt like all three authors came to the conclusion that they were defining their own faith rather than letting outside congregation or tradition define it for them. I admire the strong faith in God and desire for understanding. Ultimately, though, it seems to me that for these women their faith differences were all in their cultural and historical identities and that they really shared the same liberal faith ideas. Interesting things to think about.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    it helps understand other's beliefs. I hate the word "other".
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Probably the single most important criticism applied to this book has to do with the relative amateur understanding these three women have with respect to their own religions. It's a strong accusation: You aren't qualified to speak for us. This, I believe, highlights one of the inherent problems with religion. First of all, most people are laymen when it comes to the book specifics of the religion they follow and practice. Religions tend to thrive better when the hierarchy is more structured and the leaders at the top speak for the group. Religions are formed around a uniqueness that sets them apart from the rest, and similarly, the group tends to reject beliefs that undermines that uniqueness.Secondly, all of the above is ultimately pointless. It was more valuable that these three women opened themselves up to each other than to try and be spokesmen for their religions. This book highlights their journey to try and understand something different from what they know. If more people spent less time trying to prove the worth of their earth-centric knowledge of God and more time meeting with their neighbors, I believe a real growth would result.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Inspiring - loved it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This nonfiction work is a compilation of three women who take a journey in their faiths as they gain understanding through the sharing of their beliefs and lives.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The authors make an attempt at promoting the idea of interfaith sharing groups and they succeed, but only because they are all on the very moderate (and modern) end of the spectrum in their respective religions. Even then, some of the discussions become a little heated. If they'd included an atheist or a fundamentalist, the conversations would have been a lot more interesting. Still, the concept and purpose is admirable - most religions espouse a similar moral code even though their practices and ceremonies and doctrine are different. Seems like faithful people should be able to find more commonalities than differences. If we're all trying to live by the golden rule, does it really matter where we attend services on a day of worship?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book really made me think. A lot. I personally am a Jew - raised in the Reform Jewish religion, and I became a born again Christian 20 years ago when I was 27 years old. So, I know about the Jewish and Christian points of view that are presented in the book. I know very little, however, about the Muslim religion. I read the books "Three Cups of Tea" and "Stones Into Schools" this year and they gave me more insight into the Muslim religion than I had before and this book has taught me even more. After 911, Rayna, the Muslim mother in this book had decided to try to write a book for children about the connections between the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian religions, so she mentioned that idea to a Christian friend of hers - Suzanne, who then contacted Pricilla, a friend of a friend who happened to be a Jewish mother who was a writer. I guess they never wrote a children's book, but this book is about their "Faith Club" as they call themselves and their discussions of the three major world religions that they had together and how their relationship changed all of their views of the three religions including their own personal religious views as they got to know one another over a few years. Interestingly, none of these three women are or were very fundamentalist in their religions. Had they been, I doubt they could have had the relationship that they do. To me, Suzanne an Pricilla seem to be pretty typical representatives of the Christian and Jewish religions as I know them. I am not sure about Rayna since I really don't have any friends who are Muslim. She talks a lot in the book about her difficulty in finding like-minded Muslims who are not fundamentalist and radical in their views which makes me think, sadly, that she may be more atypical than typical as a representative of her religion. I identify very much with Priscilla, because my Jewish background has highly influenced my understanding of God even though I am a born again Christian. Like Priscilla, I am unsure if there is an afterlife, because the Jewish religion does not focus on or teach about that. I have long wondered how the Christian religion can claim to be the "fulfillment" of the Jewish religion when they focus so much on the afterlife which is not even a major part of the Jewish religion, nor is there a concensus on it as part of the Jewish religious beliefs. Like Priscilla, I also have high blood pressure and expect to have my medication for that changed soon.I understand the feeling of being a minority and the influence of the Holocaust. I enjoy the explanation of the Muslim religion that Rayna shares and Suzanne's journey to accept the other two religions.I think that this is a very good book and I highly recommend it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was surprised to find out that there are so many similarities between Christianity, Judaism, & Islam. Great inspirational read. 
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In the wake of 9/11, Ranya Idliby, a Muslim American of Palestinian descent was inspired by a passage in the Koran about Muhammad's Night Flight to write a children's interfaith book about the commonalities between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. She recruits two other mothers in the New York City area to help her write the book, Priscilla, a Reform Jew, and Suzanne, a Episcopalian Christian who was raised a Catholic. They find that before they can find common ground, they have to work through their differences. The book consists of their three intertwined first person narratives and snatches of transcripts of their conversations as they come together and clash and try to understand each other. I was raised as a Catholic and as an American I'm steeped in an overwhelmingly Christian culture. As a native New Yorker Judaism is also a religion that has represented something familiar and respected to me--I've had close Jewish friends and mentors, and I admit by and large I'm a fan of Israel. Nothing imparted about Christianity or Judaism or the views expressed by Priscilla or Suzanne surprised or challenged me. That leaves Islam, which I'm a lot less familiar with. I can't say I've ever personally known a Muslim. Ranya Idliby says "When Americans think of Islam, they think of terrorism, fanatics, abused women, spoiled rich Arabs, a religion of the sword spread by the sword." Guilty. I admit I have a lot to learn about Islam. I had read the Koran, well before 9/11, but I didn't get much out of it. Unlike Judaism and Christianity, I just didn't have the cultural context to. I admit of the three women, I found myself most resistant to Ranya's representations of her faith. When Ranya speaks of her unhappiness with how many Americans see Muhammad as a fraud who plagiarized Jewish and Christian texts, I have to admit that isn't far from what I believe. And Muhammad from what I've read was a warlord--a man who did impose his religion by force--Ranya herself alludes to that military aspect elliptically a few times while at the same time calling Muhammad "a man of peace." Ranya claims Islam is a tolerant religion from which you can "come and go"--yet I've heard that in countries following Shari'a law that you can be executed for converting people from Islam. Ranya does go into the distinction between the Wahabi Islam that has promoted fundamentalism and militarist Jihad and a more peaceful, moderate tradition, but I admit I ended the book still skeptical--but at least curious and wishing to put a biography of Muhammad on my reading list. Perhaps the one by Armstrong recommended in the bibliography.Yet at the same time it was easy to identify with Ranya and feel sympathy for the prejudice she had encountered. I was moved by the tale of how her family was driven out of Palestine and were unable to return, and yet unable to settle in Jordan and Kuwait but were made to feel like outsiders. She made me think about Israeli policy and feel for the displaced Palestinians. And she made at least her way of being Muslim sound very appealing. Ranya spoke of Islam's simplicity--about there being no Bar Mitzvah or Baptism making you a Muslim, but simply stating you recognize only one God, and that Muhammad is his prophet. That especially if you're a Sunni Muslim, that there is nothing standing between you and how you interpret the word of God and how you decide to worship. That as long as you acknowledge God, it doesn't really matter to your salvation whether you're a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim nor can you be labeled an "infidel"--all three faiths are "people of the book." How a Muslim finds the proof of God in the beauty and order of the universe. And when Ranya spoke of her difficulties in finding a mosque that speaks to her needs to be part of a Muslim community in tune with her beliefs, I felt more than a bit of shame for my fellow New Yorkers' resistance against having a mosque go up near Ground Zero. All the more because her pastor, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is involved. So Ranya's musings definitely was the portion of the book I found most valuable, where I found not just the most answers but questions. It's probably no accident given their search for common ground that each was a rather liberal representative of her religion. Priscilla following Reform Judaism but unsure of her God, Ranya sure of her faith in God but Mosque-less, and Suzanne a convert to one of the most socially and theologically liberal Christian denominations. Each women definitely touched me, spoke to me. I identified with their emotions in the wake of 9/11, and the challenges of their lives as they grappled with questions about dying, good and evil, dealing with tradition and stereotypes and pressures to conform. I was moved by how their collaboration became a friendship that changed each of them. These women could be my neighbors and their journey together is more meaningful to me than some doctrinaire book by a imam, minister and rabbi. Now, this book isn't going to give you an in-depth grounding in Judaism, Christianity or Islam. No question. But this makes a good beginning at least in imparting what the three religions have in common and what divides them. It should pique your interest to learn more, and the bibliography at the end of the book is a good place to start.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    True story told by the three women of three faiths who formed the Faith Club. I learned a lot about two of the religions and admire them for doing this. The book also has tips on forming a Faith Club. I think everyone should read it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is a must read.

Book preview

The Faith Club - Ranya Idliby

Preface

Meet the Faith Club. We’re three mothers from three faiths—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—who got together to write a picture book for our children that would highlight the connections between our religions. But no sooner had we started talking about our beliefs and how to explain them to our children than our differences led to misunderstandings. Our project nearly fell apart.

We realized that before we could talk about what united us we had to confront what divided us in matters of faith, God, and religion. We had to reveal our own worst fears, prejudices, and stereotypes.

So we made a commitment to meet regularly. We talked in our living rooms over cups of jasmine tea and bars of dark chocolate. No question was deemed inappropriate, no matter how rude or politically incorrect. We taped our conversations and kept journals as we discussed everything from jihad to Jesus, heaven to holy texts. Somewhere along the way, our moments of conflict, frustration, and anger gave way to new understanding and great respect.

Now we invite you into our Faith Club to eavesdrop on our conversations. Come into our living rooms and share our life-altering experience. Perhaps when you’re finished, you will want to have a faith club of your own.

Chapter One

In the Beginning

Ranya:

The phone rang on the morning of September 11th. It was my husband, screaming for me to turn on the TV. With sheer horror, I watched as the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

Please don’t let this be connected to Islam, I thought desperately.

As the city began to mourn, churches and temples opened their doors for worship and emotional support. I longed for a mosque, or a Muslim religious leader, an imam, who could help support my family during this horrific time. I needed a spiritual community, a safe haven where we could seek comfort.

Back then, I knew of no alternative Muslim voice that could represent the silent majority of Muslims, no nearby place where we could congregate. I did not feel comfortable at the mosque in our neighborhood, where women prayed separately from men. I wanted to feel respected. I longed to enter a mosque on an equal footing with Muslim men, to be treated as an equal, as I know I am in the eyes of God.

Tensions rose, and as some Muslims, or those mistaken for Muslims, were attacked or rounded up for questioning, I began to feel self-conscious about our Muslim identity. I was concerned and fearful for the security of my children as American Muslims. I avoided calling my son by his Muslim name, addressing him in public only by his nicknames, Ty and Timmy. When my grandmother came to visit, I asked her not to speak Arabic in public. And when my parents were in New York, they were approached by a stranger who advised them not to speak Arabic on the street. A well-meaning friend, trying to make me feel better (and warning me not to take it the wrong way), told me that my family and I don’t look Muslim. This, she thought, might protect us from discrimination. What were Muslims supposed to look like, I wondered?

My husband and I were challenged on both fronts, by Muslims abroad who questioned the very possibility of a future for our children as American Muslims of Arab descent, and on the home front, by the stereotypes and prejudices that were heightened by the attacks of 9/11. On street corners, people joked about Muslim martyrs racing to heaven to meet their brown-eyed virgins, a supposed reference to the Quran, but something I had never heard before. While we took heart from our president’s visit to the mosque in Washington, D.C., we were also aware of the voices within his own administration who felt he had gone too far and who maintained that, at its core, Islam was a militant and dangerous religion. I wondered who was representing my faith.

Although my husband and I had at first chosen to spare our children the details of the attacks, we soon found out that our kindergarten-age daughter, who was the only Muslim in her class, was learning a great deal from friends at school. We explained to her that evil men who were Arab and called themselves Muslim had performed an evil deed. Since her only experience of the Arab world overseas had involved her grandparents, she anxiously asked if her grandmother knew these men or was involved in any way.

Soon thereafter, my daughter came home from school and asked me a simple question: Do we celebrate Hanukah or Christmas? Her friends at school wanted to know. I wasn’t sure how to respond. I worried that the reality of 9/11 had made it unworkable for my children to be both Muslim and American. Would their sense of belonging be compromised? Would they as Americans feel burdened by their religion and heritage? So far I’d tried to raise my children with moral character and pride in their Muslim heritage despite the fact that we did not practice many specific religious rituals or worship at a mosque. We do celebrate a commercial kind of Christmas. But we’re Muslims. We believe Jesus was a prophet, not the son of God. How could I give my daughter an intelligent, clear answer that she could confidently deliver to other kindergarteners? Was there such an answer? As a concerned parent I created a challenge for myself: If I was unable to give my children good reasons why they should remain Muslims, other than out of pure ancestral loyalty, I would not ask them to remain true to Islam, a religion that had come to seem to me to be more of a burden than a privilege in America.

A student at heart, I started researching Islam looking for possible answers for my concerns. Soon, I stumbled upon the story of Muhammad’s night flight journey and ascension to heaven, essentially an interfaith vision in which Muhammad rides a magical winged horse ridden before him by Jesus, Moses, and other biblical prophets. As he ascends a jeweled staircase to the threshold of the kingdom of God, Muhammad is welcomed by various prophets as a fellow brother and prophet. Along with Jesus and Moses, he stands at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for communal prayers.

My heart raced with excitement as I read all this. I was dumbfounded. Why weren’t Muslims telling the world this story? It was the perfect way to share the beauty and true voice within Islam when so many, including many Muslims, were so desperately looking for answers. The terror of September 11th turned my alienation and frustration into anger at those who had invoked Islam to justify such heinous crimes. I felt an urgent need to do something. I could no longer be apathetic; I could no longer resign myself to just accepting the prevailing image of Islam, if only for the sake of my children. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought, to find a Christian and Jewish mother to write a children’s book with me that would highlight the connections within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Suzanne:

In the fall of 2001, I was an ex-Catholic, happily participating in a vibrant Episcopal church in New York City, when that cozy, homogeneous community was confronted in very different ways by Islam and Judaism. First, terrorists calling themselves Muslims crashed into the World Trade Center killing our neighbors, colleagues, and one parishioner. Then, days later, our neo-gothic, beautifully adorned church closed for renovation, and our Sunday services were moved to a modern synagogue, which had offered to share space with us.

As the 9/11 bombing challenged our perceptions of Islam and Muslims, our church’s relocation to a temple tested our relationship with Judaism and Jews. Many of our church members went elsewhere rather than attend Sunday services there. To some, the setting was off-putting, to others a barricade-protected temple felt like a dangerous place in the aftermath of 9/11.

At the time New York was a city on high alert. Everyone speculated about how and when the terrorists would strike again, but we didn’t have enough information to make an informed judgment. Who were these people? And why did they hate us? My book club started selecting books on the Middle East, and as I began my reading, I thought of a woman I greeted each morning at the school bus stop. Our daughters were in the same kindergarten class. I didn’t know her background. She looked like a stylish blend of Europe and the Middle East, and her name, Ranya Idliby, sounded Middle Eastern to me.

One morning as we waited for the bus together, I asked her where she was from, and she told me that her parents were Palestinian refugees and that she was born in Kuwait and had grown up in Dubai and in McLean, Virginia. I had never heard of Dubai, but I nodded my head anyway. After hearing about Ranya’s family history and her experience studying Middle Eastern politics, I invited her to join my book group discussion. To my surprise, a Jewish member of my book club then declined to host the next meeting. But the book club went on without that hostess, and Ranya and I started to become friends.

As our children played together we shared conversations about Islam, and I became intrigued by the roots Ranya said our religions shared. One afternoon she mentioned to me her idea to bring together a Muslim, a Jewish, and a Christian mother to write a children’s book of miracles, and I jumped at the chance. The intent of the book—to educate children about our common heritage—seemed a necessary and noble goal in the months after September 11th. So I told Ranya I’d love to be part of her trio and offered to find a Jewish woman to join us. A friend recommended Priscilla Warner for our project. She had two sons and experience writing children’s books.

It was an awkward first call. Hi, Priscilla. I’m calling because you’re Jewish; you’re a mother; and you write. But the idea of talking religion with a Palestinian Muslim and a Christian didn’t frighten Priscilla, and we made a date to meet.

I walked into our first meeting, my stiff new notebook in hand, ready to share stories of religious inspiration. I was comfortable in my own religion, having made a difficult decision to leave the Catholic Church of my parents for the relative liberalism of the Episcopal Church. After twelve years in Catholic schools, I was finally going to get an interfaith education. That education, however, proved not to be as neatly packaged as I had anticipated. It came with the messiness and complications of the real lives and perspectives of three women with very different relationships to their religions.

Priscilla:

When Suzanne Oliver called me, she wasn’t looking for just any children’s book writer. She was looking specifically for a Jewish mother who wrote.

I had never really defined myself in those terms. I was a writer. And most definitely a mother. But a Jew? Religion wasn’t my field of expertise. Deflecting pain with humor was. I’d joked all my life about being a neurotic Jew.

I knew a fair amount about my religion, thanks mostly to my father, who came from a family of conservative Jews and exposed me to Judaism early in life. I knew the rituals and stories of my religion. I had attended a somber interfaith service at my suburban reform temple on September 12, 2001, where my rabbi, along with other local clergy, tried to make sense of the unfathomable events of 9/11. The temple was overflowing that night as people spilled out onto the steps, down into the street, where policemen stood watch. (It occurred to me later that no imam had been present.)

I was comforted by the words of the moving service and the fact that so many people of different faiths had gathered together to support one another. But despite the fact that I prayed along with others to God that night, I wasn’t sure whether I really believed God existed.

Where was God on September 11th? I wondered for weeks afterward. The horrifying images of the World Trade Center attacks played over and over in my head, and I had a persistent fear that New York City would be attacked again. This time, I worried that my husband, who worked in lower Manhattan, wouldn’t be fortunate enough to survive. Would the next attack be a nuclear one? Although my family was alive and well, safe in the suburbs, the horror of 9/11 had hit close to home. Our son’s basketball coach, a kind, compassionate father of four, had died that day and a close friend’s husband had escaped the South Tower just minutes before it collapsed.

For thirty-five years, I’d suffered from severe panic attacks. And after the events of September 11th, I was thrown into one long, never-ending state of low-grade panic. But I tried to keep my fears to myself. I didn’t want to scare my kids. I wanted them to know and love New York as I did. So a couple of weeks after the attacks, I started bringing them back into the city. They wanted to come, and I pretended to be calm. I tried to convince myself that New York was still alive and well as I talked to them.

Look around you, I said to my children. Look at all these people! We were in the middle of Times Square. People of all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages were streaming past us. We come from all over the world! I said. We’re the best of America! Look what people can do here! They can do anything they want. They can be anyone they want to be. They can worship wherever they want, whenever they want. New York is the very best of what America stands for.

Although I fantasized about moving my family to a safer city, I was still smitten with New York, the city I loved too much to flee.

So when Suzanne Oliver called me, I was eager to collaborate on a children’s book that would bring children hope. And bring me hope. I wanted to try to explain the inexplicable to my kids. And to myself. To allay the fears everyone had. The fears that were overwhelming me.

Chapter Two

A Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew

Walk into a Room…

Priscilla:

Ranya opened the door to her home for our first meeting, and I was immediately intrigued. There was so much to look at: beautiful artwork on the walls, sensual fabrics and furnishings. The space felt both familiar and exotic to me at the same time. Ranya and I both own lush, color photographs by the same photographer. The identical chandelier illuminates the main room of both our homes. I felt that was an unusual omen.

I had never met a Palestinian woman before, but have always had both Jewish and Christian friends. So I focused on Ranya in particular at that first meeting. Suzanne was less mysterious to me, and Ranya was, well, Palestinian. I’m not sure how I expected a Palestinian woman to look or act, but I was intrigued by Ranya as a person. She was beautiful, smart, sophisticated, and warm. She was confident, but refreshingly self-deprecating, one of my favorite traits in any person. I felt an immediate connection to her.

Ranya spoke eloquently about the unique position she was in as a Muslim mother in New York, particularly after the attacks on the World Trade Center. My daughter’s confused, Ranya explained. She knows she’s different from the Christian and Jewish children she’s surrounded by, and I feel it’s time to educate her and my son about what it means to be a Muslim in America today. This was a difficult challenge for Ranya since Islam now had violent and confusing connotations for most Americans.

I’d never interacted so intimately with a Muslim woman, I kept thinking as I listened to Ranya speak about her concerns. This was going to be an interesting meeting. The air felt charged. Partly because I didn’t know these women and we were getting into personal issues, partly because I didn’t know, as a Jew, what political direction a conversation with a Palestinian woman might take. But primarily the air was charged because I was in a room with two substantial, intelligent women who felt an urgent need to connect and produce something meaningful out of that connection.

I asked Ranya where her family was from, and she told me and Suzanne, in vivid detail, the story of her family’s history in Palestine. I was riveted. Ranya talked with passion and sensitivity. I was hearing the story of a displaced Palestinian family, told to me not by an angry person with a political ax to grind, but by a loving mother with a family and a story to tell. It was as simple as that.

In retrospect, I guess I had been expecting a woman straight out of the evening news shots of anguished Palestinian mothers in refugee camps. A woman who would never sit down and talk to me, face to face, so calmly.

Ranya:

The morning of our first meeting, I lit a scented candle, fussed with the cushions on my couch and waited for Priscilla and Suzanne to arrive. I was not nervous about meeting a Jewish woman. Unlike Priscilla, who was meeting her first Palestinian woman, I had met many Jewish people representing an array of political opinions. Even before I’d moved to New York City ten years earlier, I’d had many Jewish friends. Still, I knew it was possible that Priscilla and I could clash. Palestinians and Israelis were at war. And while I may suffer less than those in refugee camps, my identity is tied up in my family’s displacement from our ancestral home half a century ago.

As soon as I met Priscilla, her eagerness to connect was evident, and, I hoped, an indicator of the warmth and generosity of her spirit. Priscilla was a reform Jew, and in my mind she represented the great Jewish liberal tradition of debate and free thought. As she confirmed later in our discussions, a large part of the Jewish theological tradition is based on the commentaries, which represent centuries of ongoing debate and interpretation of the Jewish Holy Books. The fact that I was able to talk so freely to Priscilla and Suzanne served as a sad reminder to me of the lack of debate in Islam today.

I had grown up hearing of a legendary time in history when the door was closed on Islamic theological debate (Ijthihad). So as Priscilla explained the evolution of the reform, conservative, and orthodox branches of Judaism in America, it occurred to me that Islam needed a parallel experience. America is a country that was built on the principle of freedom of worship, and in America today Islam needs an American journey.

When I shared my family story with Priscilla, although I felt self-conscious of such instant intimacy and a little awkward about sharing my family’s sense of loss and victimhood, I felt that I was in the presence of someone open to meaningful dialogue. While Priscilla accepted my story at face value, she told me later that some of her friends were skeptical.

Suzanne:

From the time I discovered Ranya was Muslim, I was intrigued. I wanted to understand the basis of her faith and how she reconciled her modern, Westernized life with what was widely viewed as an unenlightened religion of the developing world. My knowledge of Islam was meager. I knew Muslims followed the teaching of an Arab called Muhammad, that they worshiped in mosques, that they had a holy book called the Quran, and that they were obliged to make a pilgrimage to Mecca once in their lifetime.

I had visited mosques in Istanbul, and I had heard the enchanting Arabic calls to prayer of the muezzin throughout Turkey and Morocco. But I held an image of Islam as a violent religion controlled by men to promote the continued hegemony of men, a religion of mistreated women, polygamy, and an eye for an eye justice system. All of these images fit with stereotypes popularized in books I’d read, like Jean Sasson’s Princess, and were supported by reports in the American media at various times—stories about women being stoned, about the 9/11 attackers being inspired by the Quran, about the death sentence placed on author Salman Rushdie by the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini.

During my own travels in Muslim countries, I had seen women treated as second-class citizens. They covered their heads with scarves or even their entire bodies in shapeless cloaks. In Istanbul, I was shooed out of the courtyard of a mosque while I could see men prostrating themselves in prayer inside. One man quickly emerged and waved me out of the mosque’s gates. I was not allowed to look.

I had left the Catholic church to become an Episcopalian, in part because Catholics don’t allow women to become priests, so I was curious to learn how Ranya could reconcile her modern life with Islam. After all, she did not wear a head scarf. She drank alcohol. And she wasn’t fighting a jihad against the West, at least as far as I could tell.

In retrospect, Ranya was on a jihad—a word I later learned to mean an inner struggle. She was struggling to define her Muslim faith. And she was struggling to have this faith recognized in the West.

Priscilla:

The first question the three of us asked each other at our initial meeting was What is your religious background? Mine, I explained to Ranya and Suzanne, was an eclectic one.

I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, a diverse city with a sizeable Jewish population. My father was from a small town in Massachusetts, and my mother grew up in Hollywood, California. Although they were both Jewish, they came from very different backgrounds. In their sunny California house, my mother claims that her family served spaghetti as a traditional Passover meal. My father’s conservative Jewish upbringing meant that his seders lasted hours while everyone digested the matzoh balls my grandmother had slaved over for days.

When I was seven, my grandfather died, and my father recited Kaddish, a memorial prayer, twice a day for an entire year, in his father’s memory. At Narragansett Beach, where we rented a cottage that summer, he did this with a tiny group of men who were also in mourning. Clearly influenced by this experience, he enrolled me and my siblings in a Hebrew day school when I was in third grade. I spent four years there studying Hebrew, Torah, and Jewish history all morning and secular subjects like math and history in the afternoon.

I remember the Hebrew day school as an exotic, insular experience, where I began to think the earth was primarily populated by Jews. Boys talked endlessly about Sandy Koufax and girls claimed Paul Newman was 100 percent Jewish. I was afraid of the principal, a stern rabbi in a black suit. The whole experience felt serious and no-nonsense. I was a good student, learned my prayers and began praying by myself at home.

When I was in seventh grade, my father abruptly pulled me out of the Hebrew day school and enrolled me in a Quaker girls’ school. He never explained this sudden shift in my education. In retrospect, I suppose he sent me to what he felt was the best school in the area. While my father was proud to be a Jew, he was a Jew on his own terms. Sometimes he fasted on Yom Kippur; other years he didn’t. On some Passovers he ate no bread; other years he started the day with an English muffin.

As a family, we still went to temple on important Jewish holidays. But at school I went to chapel every day and sang dozens of hymns along with my new blonde friends. There were other Jewish girls in my class, and we all went along with the program. The Quakers never rammed religion down our throats; we were exposed to it as part of a curriculum that would help us become better human beings.

In December, we participated in Christmas Vespers, a musical assembly that included Christmas carols and prayers. I hesitated over the name Jesus, but I sang, and appreciated the beauty of the songs.

Every Friday my entire school held a Quaker silent meeting. Designated students and teachers took turns sitting on the facing bench at the front of the room. And then everyone fell silent. Anyone could stand up to recite a poem or prayer or say whatever was on their minds. It felt enormously empowering to be able to speak about whatever subject moved us. I enjoyed going to a Quaker school. The religion stressed open-mindedness and felt liberating in contrast to my years at the Hebrew day school, which I remember as rigid and small-minded.

In college I socialized with both Christian and Jewish friends, but my world was less Jewish than ever, since I dated a WASP from Boston. I was the only Jew in the room on many occasions with him. That made me particularly uncomfortable once when an older man visiting from the South asked everyone in our little group to reveal their religions.

Growing up Jewish meant growing up with an attachment to Israel. My family’s attachment was not especially strong or pro-Zionist. But I do remember my father boasting of the bravery of the Israeli soldiers during the Six Day War. I took a trip to Israel with my family when I was twelve, and I recounted that trip to Ranya and Suzanne. My grandmother organized our itinerary, and we visited cousins of hers in a kibbutz near Galilee. That’s probably quite close to where my family is from, Ranya told me.

I’d walked the ancient streets of Jerusalem, floated in the waters of the Dead Sea, and peered into the entrances of the caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered. Our trip reinforced my connection as a Jew to Israel, a connection that had been stressed at the Hebrew day school. But when I went on to a Quaker school and adolescent concerns took over my life, Judaism and Israel took a back seat. As I grew older and began to learn about the politics of the Middle East, I became uncomfortable with Israel’s policies on the West Bank. This was not something I discussed with my friends or family. But when I was in my twenties, out working on my own, and the United Jewish Appeal tracked me down to make a fund-raising call, I told them that I was not comfortable sending money to Israel as long as the government was building settlements in what was formerly Jordan. I thought that was an unnecessarily provocative act.

I mentioned this anecdote to Ranya and Suzanne. I suppose I was putting my cards out on the table for Ranya to see, letting her know I was an enlightened Jew, a Jew who was open-minded to the issue of Palestinians’ rights. Maybe I was indeed a bit more open to learning about Ranya’s family history and political opinions than another Jewish woman might have been. That was for Ranya to decide. I did, however, stand on the sidewalk outside her apartment building after our first meeting and rave to Suzanne about Ranya, the project, and the ease with which we all seemed to communicate.

Ranya:

Early on, I shared with Priscilla and Suzanne that, when I was a self-conscious, insecure teenager, the worst question you could ask me was, Where are you from? Now, as a mother, I tell the story of where I’m from with the hope that my personal journey, with what small insights it reveals, will help my American children feel pride in their heritage in these troubled times.

I am a Muslim woman of Palestinian heritage, and no matter where I have lived I have always been an outcast. I have struggled to develop my own personal identity in the shadow of whatever stereotype others have attributed to a Muslim Palestinian woman. This struggle has affected many aspects of my life, from my choice of a major at university (political science) to my enormous appreciation of the security and comfort that becoming an American citizen has afforded me.

I was born in Kuwait, where Palestinians were not granted citizenship at birth. My parents had lived briefly in Jordan, as refugees fleeing Palestine, and that fact allowed me to inherit their Jordanian citizenship. Rumor had it that because we were Palestinian, our passports were encoded so that Jordanian officials could distinguish us from native Jordanians. Thus, from the beginning, I felt officially documented as an outsider.

I grew up in the oil-prosperous emirate of Kuwait in the 1970s, where my father started his career after earning two degrees in the United States. Although my father was financially successful from an early age, there were elements in Kuwaiti society who resented the success of those they believed were opportunistic refugees. Non-Kuwaiti nationals, especially those considered most threatening to the status quo, such as the Palestinians, were given the derogatory title of Abu al-Pantalon, a term that meant, literally Those of the Pants. It was an unspoken rule that only Kuwaitis could wear traditional white robes and head scarves. Everyone else was immediately identifiable as a noncitizen and had little hope of ever gaining citizenship, except for a lucky few who won it as a gift through royal decree.

My father rose above any attempts to marginalize him, and he constantly reminded his family that we lived in Kuwait because of economic necessity. He spoke often of our family’s history, and much of my identity grew out of a sense of what my family had lost and what I had never had. My father placed a large premium on our heritage. He told and retold the story of our family’s life in Palestine with a great sense of pride and empowerment in response to those who sought to make us feel inadequate or secondary in a hierarchical society. There were clearly a host of lessons we were supposed to learn from our family’s experiences.

Our family name, Tabari, was derived from Tiberias, the area of Palestine surrounding the Sea of Galilee. It was

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